


I am My Beloved's and My Beloved is Mine

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: The Devil's Afterlife [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Bittersweet, Catholicism, Closure, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Is The Best Kind Of Sweet, Jewish Character, Jewish Peter Parker, Jewish Wedding, LGBTQ Character, Love, M/M, Marriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SO MUCH FLUFF, Wedding Fluff, Weddings, spider-devil, spideydevil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:51:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: The pleasure of your company is requested at the marriage of Peter Benjamin Parker and Matthew Michael Murdock. Tissues will be provided.“Somebody once told me, ‘New York seems like a place where many impossible things happen.’ And I think tonight might be one of them.”“What’s so impossible about it? Marrying a gay superhero in front of a bunch of other superheroes on the roof of the building belonging to the richest man in America? I think that’s just an ordinary day in the Big Apple, babe.”You shouldn't have to read the previous stories in this series to understand this one.





	1. Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This was another chunk of narrative that just didn't quite fit into my next long fic, but I really wanted to give my heroes this one perfect day, as well as take the opportunity to develop many of these characters and relationships further, especially Peter/Tony and Matt/Frank. (Oh yeah, and foreshadow the hell out of some dark, dark times ahead. Because I'm me, and The Darkness is where I live.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lazy morning in bed. Matt visits Jack. Peter contemplates his death. And there's always paperwork.

“Good morning, lover.”

Matt smiled at the sound of Peter’s lazy, sleep-roughened voice murmuring in his ear. This was his favorite voice, this waking-up-together voice, the voice that contained all Matt would ever need to know he was home. It had become all the more precious since Matt lost his powers, as his memory of Peter’s shape and movement began to recede further from his mind.

It had been fifteen months since the terrorist Hominus had blown up a warehouse in Brooklyn and released a mutation-destroying bioweapon that killed Jessica, Luke, Danny, and Trish. Matt had survived, but the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had not. And the battle that followed, in the mountains of Vermont, had left Peter with wounds on his heart and his mind that Matt did not think would ever fully heal.

He wasn’t sure exactly when surviving had become living again, but it had. Not that it wasn’t still hard for them, learning how to live in the aftermath, but it had become a different kind of hard, no longer hopscotching from nightmare to meltdown to panic attack in search of solid ground. Now it was time for the steadier work of carving out a new path forward.

And that path included this bright, brave, funny, righteous, good-hearted man who loved Matt with a ferocity that still sometimes stunned him.

At 10, Matt had been too old, too angry, too broken for anyone to want to adopt. Now almost 45, he was still old, angry, and broken. But Peter, who still believed the world could be fair, who still believed humanity was worth saving in spite of all evidence to the contrary, wanted him anyway. Had _fought_ for him anyway. Was, in less than 10 hours, going to marry him anyway.

No miracle could account for any of it, the layers of impossibility that had been peeled away to reveal this new future. So he was trying something new: He was trying not to question it. God had taken and He had given, and Peter was here, now, however improbably, waking him with a kiss the morning they would be married. _Bless us, O Lord, for these thy gifts._ A meal of a different sort, perhaps, but deserving of grace all the same.

They had awoken as they had fallen asleep—Matt on his back, Peter on his side, his head nestled into the curve of Matt’s neck and one wiry arm thrown diagonally across Matt’s chest and belly. Static was shooting up the arm Peter lay on, but Matt didn’t want to move, not yet, just wanted to breathe in the faint, warm, pipe-tobacco scent of Peter’s hair. He didn’t know where it came from, that smoke-and-vanilla smell—it had just always been there, always uniquely him. Besides, the stillness of their sleep meant that Peter had gone two full weeks without a nightmare. It wasn’t quite his record, but the intervals were finally beginning to get longer and Matt didn’t want to break the spell.

But then, as if sensing Matt’s discomfort, Peter shifted his weight to roll on top of him, 145 pounds of bone and sinew and not much else straddled across Matt’s hips, and then began kissing every inch of Matt’s face.

Matt squinched his eyes shut against the kisses and laughed. “Good morning to you, too.”

“I. Love. This. Face,” Peter said between kisses.

“I’m glad,” Matt said, kissing him back, finding a cheekbone. “Because you’re the one who has to wake up to it for the rest of your life.”

Peter propped himself up over him on one elbow and traced the fingers of his free hand across the scar tissue that that splashed across his nose and cheeks and creased and crumpled the delicate skin and lashless lids that framed his hazel-green prosthetic eyes, permanently fixed into a middle-distance gaze. Then he bent forward and kissed each eye in turn. “My beautiful man,” he said softly.

If Matt could have rolled his eyes, he would have—he knew Peter meant it, loved that Peter wanted nothing more than for Matt to believe it, but it was a lost cause. Thirty years of enhanced senses had given him a fairly detailed impression of the faces of the people close to him, but his own remained locked behind the flat blankness of mirrors and photos, a mystery he could only approach sideways through the eyes of others. He knew he was fit and he dressed well—he took pride in that. But before all else he was a curiosity. People stared. It wasn’t because he was handsome. Though perhaps, he was beginning to be willing to believe, love made him so to Peter.

He reached up and touched Peter’s face in turn, exploring the planes of his cheek and brow with his fingertips, running his thumb along the soft stubble of his jaw and then following the cleft in his chin up to his mouth. Peter smiled beneath his touch, as he always did, and then caught Matt’s thumb between his teeth, lightly tickling it with his tongue.

It took nothing to get Matt hard in the morning. Peter smiled against Matt’s thumb and then begin to roll his hips playfully, deliciously, torturously, obliterating his exasperation over Peter’s compliment. He exhaled hard.

“Oh, fuck you,” he said happily. “You’re killing me.”

“Aww,” Peter said, reaching back with his free hand and trailing his fingers up Matt’s thigh. “I’m sorry.”

“Liar.” Matt tried to reach around to take matters into his own hands, but Peter was too quick for him, catching his hand with mutant speed, then pinned both of his hands above Matt’s head and kissed him deeply.

“I heard,” Peter said in a low, hoarse voice that made Matt’s breath gutter in his throat, “that you should have sex the morning before the wedding just in case you’re too tired afterward.”

“What about before _and_ after?” Matt murmured.

“Even better,” Peter said, kissing him again.

* * *

A little before one, they got dressed and drove out to Brooklyn. It was a cool, bright day and the trees were already brilliant with autumn color. It was the kind of fall day in New York that Peter loved best—the New York of postcards and movies and dreams—and walking down the street with Matt’s hand tucked into his elbow, the memory of that gloriously sexy morning still warm on their cheeks, it felt almost like the opening sequence of a romantic comedy.

In truth their errand was a much more sober one. The cemetery was six blocks from the subway, 15 rolling acres of stone and marble dating back hundreds of years, and after getting directions from the attendant at the gate, they eventually found their way to Jonathan Murdock’s grave. It was the first time Matt had visited since the funeral 34 years before.

Peter liked visiting the graves of his own parents and Uncle Ben in Queens—the graves lay in a pretty part of the cemetery and he’d come out three or four times a year to clear away the dead leaves and grass clippings, to add another stone to the ledge of each grave’s pediment according to Jewish tradition. It felt good to talk to them out loud, to tell them about his life, and work, and Matt. To be able to take care of them still.

He brought Matt there for the first time two days before. Aunt May had joined them, showed him where to place the stones, translated the Hebrew inscriptions for him.

_Why do you leave stones instead of flowers?_ Matt had asked.

_Because flowers die_ , May had replied. _Stones don’t. Neither do our memories._

Later that evening, when Peter sidled up to the idea that maybe this would be a good time to finally visit Jack, too, Matt had rejected it outright. Unlike Peter, he had no one in his life who remembered Jack the way Matt did. His father had become the protagonist of a book only he’d read—someone he could describe, but not someone anyone else could really know. His grave only served as a reminder of how profoundly alone in the world he truly was.

But this morning over coffee, Matt had said, more offhandedly than Peter knew he felt, “I think I’d like to go see Dad after all.”

Peter didn’t ask him why he changed his mind—he was afraid even the lightest probe would make Matt reconsider, and he didn’t want him to.

Jack’s grave was little more than a marker, just a small, flat, rectangular unpolished stone, simply carved. But Matt, Peter supposed, didn’t really care what it looked like.

“We’re here,” Peter said softly, pulling him to a gentle stop and turning him toward the grave. “Three paces, straight ahead.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, but didn’t let go of his arm. Above them, a flight of Canada geese was winging south in a broad V toward their winter home, their honking conversation to one another carrying unusually loudly through the chilly air, and the trees around them shivered in the breeze.

“You okay?” Peter asked, covering Matt’s hand with his.

“Yeah,” Matt said. He had his poker face on, which Peter knew meant he was still deciding whether that was the truth or not, but Peter didn’t press. He knew Matt would regret leaving now; he’d let Matt work up to it in his own time.

After a few moments, Matt released Peter’s arm and stepped forward carefully until his cane scraped the stone. When it did, his bearing changed immediately—the tension fell from his shoulders and he dropped smoothly to a kneel, his cane forgotten on the ground beside him. He reached forward, brushed some leaves away, and traced the letters of his father’s name, the date of his birth and, more slowly, of his death.

Matt rested the flat of his hand against the stone and bowed his head. Then after a moment he crossed himself and sat back on his heels.

“This is really dumb, but could you come here?” Matt asked, extending his hand toward Peter.

“It’s not dumb,” Peter said. He knelt on the dead grass beside him and took Matt’s hand in his. Matt kept his other hand on the gravestone.

A tear slid out beneath Matt’s sunglasses but he didn’t bother to wipe it away. He just sat there with one hand in Peter’s and the other on his father’s grave, as if somehow he could will the veil between worlds to part for just a moment, just long enough to for his father to see that he was no longer alone.

Matt’s tears were kryptonite for Peter and now Peter’s chin was quivering and his eyes were wet, and shit, he loved this man more and more with every breath.

Finally Peter couldn’t hold back a sniffle and Matt turned toward him and smiled. “Softie,” he said.

“And proud of it,” Peter said, kissing his hand.

As they moved to stand, Peter noticed that Jack was buried next to an Eileen Murdock _nee_ O’Brien, born 22 years before Jack, dead just two years before him. Widow of PFC Patrick Joseph Murdock, USMC KIA.

“Is that your grandmother?” Peter asked.  

“Yeah,” Matt said, reaching out and touching the stone as he got up. “Gran was—a very formidable woman, to say the least. Hardcore Catholic. Makes me look like a heretic. Mass every day, twice if she had time. She’d take me to church on Sundays. My dad wouldn’t go, but she was determined that I would,” Matt said. “I guess it took.”

“Where’s your grandfather? Arlington?” He had never known that Matt’s grandfather had been a Marine. It was strange to think that after five years together they still had so much to learn about each other.

“Somewhere at the bottom of the Mekong River, apparently,” Matt said. “My dad was pretty young when he got killed, so it was just him and Gran most of his life. When Gran died my dad bought the plot next to her for himself so she wouldn’t be alone. I guess he didn’t realize he’d be using it as soon as he did.”

Peter blinked back more tears. These Murdocks were going to be the death of him. “I love knowing that about him. That he did that.”

“He didn’t like to let on, but he was a bit of a softie too,” Matt said. He reached for Peter’s arm and Peter tucked his hand into the curve of his elbow.

Casting one last glance back at Jack Murdock’s grave, Peter realized with a start that he had outlived Matt’s father by four years. He still had a year and a half to go until he outlived Uncle Ben. Seven more until he outlived his mother. Nine until he outlived his father. Only now did he understand how young they had all been. Three weeks shy of his 45th birthday on that bright October afternoon, Matt had already outlived them all.

He would almost certainly outlive Peter, too. They both took it as an article of faith that Peter would die first, without warning, in his suit, while Matt would continue on until age or accident overtook him. They both took it as an article of faith that however many years they would have together, it would never be enough.

But they were going to start anyway.

“Should we maybe go get married now?” Peter asked.

“Yes,” Matt said, and that incredible slow smile broke across his face like the sun.           

* * *

Back in Manhattan, they rode two stops past Hell’s Kitchen to Columbus Circle, then walked three blocks further to Stark Tower. They took the executive entrance, where Happy Hogan met them and whisked them straight to the penthouse in Tony and Pepper’s private elevator.

Matt wondered, as they flew skyward toward their wedding, what his father would make of all this, would make of him marrying a man. They’d never had a chance to talk about it directly, of course, but he’d never heard Jack use a gay slur, had in fact once smacked Matt for repeating one he learned on the playground. His grandmother was a different story, and living right smack between the theater district and the West Side docks gave her no end of proof that New York was the new Sodom. But Jack had always just rolled his eyes and murmured, _Don’t listen to her, Matty. Those rules are two thousand years old._

So Matt thought—or at least he liked to think—that he’d be okay with his son being queer. (After years of resisting any label at all, he’d settled on that one because it felt the least prescriptive.) Maybe he’d be a little puzzled, maybe a little skeptical—he could imagine Jack saying, “If you like women too, Matty, why don’t you just marry one instead?”—but he’d come around in the end.

And he’d like Peter, he knew that much. Not just because he was Spider-Man, although that would certainly help, but because as much as Jack aspired for his son to get an education, he always felt more at home around men who made things. Matt had no idea if his father would appreciate Peter’s photography, but it took no effort at all to imagine Peter and Jack losing an entire rainy afternoon together at the kitchen table, restoring one of Peter’s antique cameras together.

(He didn’t let himself imagine that often, though. It came perilously close to being a wish, and he tried not to wish for impossible things.)

“It’s a fucking madhouse up there,” Happy warned them, interrupting his reverie. “Between Pepper and your aunt, well—let’s just say the Stark IPO was a vacation by comparison.”

“So, you’re saying maybe we should just elope,” Matt deadpanned, threading his fingers through Peter’s.

“Nah,” Peter said, kissing Matt’s hand. “Besides, denying Aunt May her chance to throw me a Jewish wedding will cause far more pain in the long run.”

Matt kissed his forehead in reply. In any case, the Jewish wedding had been his idea—he wanted to say his vows before God, and Peter had grown up attending a liberal synagogue that recognized both same-sex and interfaith marriages. If Father Lantom could not marry them, this seemed like the next best thing.

And in truth, he was becoming less attached to the Church the longer he lived with Peter. He loved Father Lantom, treasured the long, wide-ranging conversations they had about morality and God’s will under a whisper-thin pretense of confession, but Lantom accepted him in a way the Church wouldn’t. He had no designs on converting—like all good Catholics, Matt had a soft spot for hopeless cases, even his own faith. But was starting feel like a childhood bedroom he’d long moved away from—still beloved and familiar, but no longer home.

Peter was his home now.

* * *

“Holy shit,” Peter swore as the elevator door opened.

Happy had not been joking—the penthouse looked like the staging area for a ground assault, albeit one to be fought by event planners and caterers with floral arrangements and chafing dishes. Pepper was standing in the middle with a clipboard, barking out orders, while Aunt May was flitting back and forth between the penthouse and the roof garden, where the wedding would take place. But for a moment Peter was back in the Green Mountains of Vermont on a rainy August night preparing to lead a company of SHIELD commandos into a battle that would end with fewer survivors than he ever would have imagined.

“You okay?” Matt murmured, somehow always reading his mind.  

“I’m always okay with you, babe,” Peter said in his best Bogart imitation—it always made Matt laugh, and it did now. With Matt’s laugh in his ear and his hand tucked beneath his arm, Hominus couldn’t touch him. Not tonight, anyway.

Happy stepped out of the elevator first and formed a megaphone with his hands. “Make a hole!” he bellowed. “Grooms coming through!”

“Office!” Pepper shouted from across the room, waving at them and pointing to a room to her left. “Rabbi’s waiting!”

May intercepted them at the foot of the stairs and steered them through the chaos to Tony’s office, where Foggy, MJ, and Rabbi Shana Rose, the only SHIELD chaplain with a high enough security clearance to know Spider-Man’s true identity, were waiting.

After a round of quick hugs, they gathered around Tony’s desk, where a large square sheet of heavy, deckle-edged paper lay beautifully calligraphed in Aramaic and then English, and embossed below that with Braille. This was the ketubah, the traditional Jewish wedding contract, always inscribed in the ancient Jewish language and the language of the couple because it was at heart, a legal document affirming the couple’s promise to each other. (That detail made Matt love the idea of a Jewish wedding even more.)

“I think I should let my lawyer read this over,” Peter said.

“Dork,” Matt joked as Peter guided his hand to the Braille portion. Matt smiled when he touched it—they had agreed on the text beforehand, so the words didn’t come as a surprise, but it was wonderful to read them again all the same.

_On this day in New York City, Peter Benjamin Parker and Matthew Michael Murdock have entered into the following Covenant of Marriage: We pledge to nurture, trust, and respect each other throughout our life together. We promise to always be open and honest, understanding and accepting, loving and forgiving, and loyal to one another. We promise to work together to build a harmonious relationship of equality, while respecting each other’s uniqueness and helping one another achieve our fullest potential. We promise to comfort each other through life’s sorrows and share equally in its joy. Together, we promise to create a home filled with love, laughter, and compassion, and to support each other fully as we strive to build a world filled with peace and love._

Peter knuckled a tear away and snaked a hand around Matt’s waist in a sideways hug.

“Are you both satisfied with the terms of the contract, gentlemen?” Rabbi Rose asked.

“Yes,” Matt said, with a catch in his voice.

“Me too,” Peter said.

“Then let’s get this signed so you can get dressed,” she said. In a low voice with a wicked smile she added, “Miss Potts will have my head if I let you get behind schedule.”

Peter signed first, then handed the fountain pen to Matt and guided it to the line where his name was already printed. In all other respects, he still had the handwriting of a nine-year-old boy writing in the dark, but he had been practicing his signature for weeks just for this. The ketubah was going to be framed on their living room wall, after all—he wanted it to be perfect.

And it was.

Foggy and MJ signed next, as witnesses, followed by Rabbi Rose. Then they quickly repeated the process for their New York State marriage license.

“Mazel tov,” Rabbi Rose said. “You’re legally married now. Now all you have to do now is relax and enjoy the party.”

Just then, Pepper threw open the office door in the highest of dudgeon. “Oh my god, what are you still doing in here? The guests will be here in less than two hours! You have to get dressed!”

“Yep,” Peter said wryly. “I feel more relaxed already.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just looked at today's date and realized this is basically the same weekend I envisioned them getting married, so yay! 
> 
> I'm BeaArthurPendragon on Tumblr, too!


	2. Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy is the best. Wade is the worst. MJ talks Peter off a ledge of his own devising. Tony has a surprising moment of emotional maturity. Karen clears the air with Matt.

“Let me check your shave, buddy,” Foggy said, taking Matt’s chin in his hand and tapping a fine line of stubble lining his jaw. Pepper had diverted Matt and Peter into separate guest suites with their respective wedding parties to change—a nod to tradition, she insisted, but all it did was make them both more anxious. “You missed a spot.”

“Just—get it for me, okay?” Matt said.

“There you go,” Foggy said, making a practiced swipe of the razor down Matt’s cheek and wiping the spot clean with a damp washcloth. “Perfect.”

“It sounds like there are more people working this wedding than attending it,” Matt observed.

“Well, you know Pepper. Go big or go home,” Karen said. “Here, drink this,” she said, pressing a glass into Matt’s hand. It was scotch—just a couple of sips’ worth, but an excellent one.

“God that’s good,” he said.

“Raided Tony’s stash,” Karen said.

“What time is it?” Matt asked, realizing he wasn’t wearing his watch. Where was his watch? I checked the pockets of his bathrobe irrationally—of course it wouldn’t be there. “Where’s my watch?”

“Quarter to five,” Foggy said, pressing the watch into his hand. “Time to get dressed.”

“I’ll—go find something else to do,” Karen said, kissing Matt on the cheek. “See you upstairs.”

The scotch had yet to work, so Matt tried to calm his nerves by dressing slowly and methodically. “You have the ring, right?” Matt asked, tucking in his shirt.

“I have the ring. It’s on my pinky. Peter is a very skinny man. I look like a mob boss.”

Matt laughed, harder than the joke warranted, but he was so very nervous. His hands were shaking so much he kept dropping his cufflinks—a pair of platinum disks embossed with a Braille M and P that were Peter’s wedding gift to him. The unfamiliarity of the room wasn’t helping—there were so many things he had to keep track of already, the suit and the tie and the watch and the fucking cufflinks and he was too anxious to keep them all straight, never mind where they all were at any given moment, and for Christ’s sake would his fingers just behave for five minutes so he could dress himself?

“Want a hand?” Foggy asked, handing them back to him for the third time. “You had to tie my shoes for me before my wedding, remember?”

“Why am I so nervous?” Matt asked, surrendering by holding out his wrists. “I’ve never done anything in the world that feels more right than this.”

“Because you still believe that if you tell the world what matters to you, some enemy will use it as leverage against you,” Foggy said, folding and smoothing one of Matt’s shirt cuffs and expertly threading a cufflink through the holes. Foggy and Marci had left lucrative careers in D.C. heading up Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz’s new K Street lobbying practice to return to New York so they could be closer to Matt as he recovered from the loss of his powers. Foggy may have lost the fancy job—despite his threats not to, Matt had hired him back in the end—but he still had his fancy shirts and knew his way around a French cuff like a boss. “Which is yet another thing Stick was completely wrong about, by the way.”

“I know,” Matt said, though he agreed more with the first half of the statement than the second. He touched the cufflinks to check they were secure and then began to feel around the bed where his suit had been laid out.

“Where’s my tie?”

“I got it, buddy,” Foggy said, tugging his sleeve to prompt him to stand up straight. “Hold still.”

“I can do it myself—”

“There’s a difference between can and should. Peter will murder me if I let you leave this room with a crooked tie,” Foggy said. “Hold still.”

Matt conceded the point and let Foggy knot the tie. He had to admit it felt nice to give into Foggy’s fussing right now—he wanted to look good for Peter, and besides, he had nothing to prove to his best friend. Foggy was so far still the person he’d lived with the longest in his adult life—seven years, all told, from freshman year of college through their third year of law school—and that easy intimacy had never gone away, not even during the dark years after the Castle trial when they weren’t speaking to each other, or during their three years living in different cities. Matt was grateful for it now, grateful for some kind of family, surrogate though it was, grateful that he had a brother standing beside him today.

Foggy smoothed the tie and patted his chest. “All done.”

Then Matt shrugged on his jacket and put his sunglasses on. New Wayfarers, for the occasion. He’d never gone back to his signature round frames after the Fisk trial—too many people approached him in public, asking for selfies and autographs. The new frames weren’t a perfect disguise, but they helped.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“I think Peter will cream his pants when he sees you.”

“That’s disgusting, Fog.”

“What do you think he’s going to do? He’s going to bawl like a baby,” Foggy said. “You’re, like, illegally handsome, and if I were not happily married to the woman of my dreams, the mother of a child I love more than my own life, I could possibly be a little gay for you right now.”

Matt chuckled but then he couldn’t stop—it became a full belly laugh, and then Foggy was laughing, and now they were just laughing at each other’s laughter, for no reason at all other than they were best friends together on his wedding day and there were superheroes upstairs and he was marrying one and Jesus, it was absurd, and wonderful, and perfect.

“Oh my God,” Matt wheezed when they finally managed to get ahold of themselves again. “You are not allowed to speak again tonight.”

“You cannot deny me the pleasure of my wedding toast,” Foggy said. “I’ve been writing this motherfucker for 20 years.”

“Please don’t mention the story about the keg and the balloon.”

“I _might_ mention the story about the keg and the balloon, and I am _definitely_ mentioning the golf club.”

“You’re the worst, Fog.”

“Come here, man,” Foggy said, pulling him into a hug and kissing his cheek. This was what Matt had missed the most while Foggy was in D.C.—this easy, companionable affection that most men were reluctant to give. It was something Matt found himself craving more these days, now that he could no longer perceive smiles or nods or really any kind of body language at all, and Foggy, he was pretty sure, had figured that out. “I am so happy for you right now. You deserve this. I love you.”

“Love you too, man,” Matt said, squeezing him tight. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“After all we’ve been through?” Foggy asked. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

* * *

“Peter, stop,” MJ said, as Peter unhooked and refastened his cufflinks, each engraved with an intertwined M and P, Matt’s gift to him, for what must have been the dozenth time. “You look perfect.”

Peter shook out his hands but then occupied them by smoothing the lapels of his suit instead. “I know it’s stupid,” he said. “He can’t see me, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else here thinks.”

“It matters to you,” MJ said, straightening her own tie and patting the breast pocket of her suit jacket to make sure Matt’s ring was still there. She took it out and slipped it onto her thumb. “It’s your way of honoring him. It always has been, and he knows that.”

“But it’s stupid, right? I should be worried about what I smell like, or how soft my hands are, but I can’t stop looking in the fucking mirror like a vain—”

“Stop,” MJ said. She leaned in and took a sniff. “You smell great.” She took Peter’s hand between hers and circled her fingers on his skin. “Your hands are as smooth as a baby’s butt.” She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. “More importantly, he loves you, Peter. He loves you so, so much.”

 “Something’s going to go wrong,” he said, staring at Matt’s ring on MJ’s thumb, not quite believing that it would ever make it onto Matt’s hand. “I know it.”

“Like, ‘Foggy loses the ring’ wrong, or ‘aliens are about to pour out of a hole in the sky’ wrong?”

“Like, ‘I’m an Avenger with a secret identity and I was never supposed to fall in love with anyone I could share that with’ wrong.”

MJ laughed. “Honey,” she said. “I hate to break it to you, but this is real. Sometimes things actually do work out the way you want them to.”

“No, they don’t, MJ,” Peter said, waving her away and walking to the window. “I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever really loved. I’m like poison. I never should have agreed to this.”

“Oh, Peter, you’ll never lose me,” Wade said, swooping into the room without knocking and taking a long pull from a fifth of Jack Daniel’s before handing the bottle to MJ.

If nothing else, Wade had a real talent for obliterating Peter’s occasional indulgence in self-pity.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” MJ asked, because what he was wearing was a baby blue leisure suit embroidered with rhinestone Glocks and Bowie knives and a fuchsia feather boa draped around his neck.

“If Thor and T’Challa can wear their ceremonial armor, then I, too, should be allowed to wear the traditional dress of my people,” Wade said, giving them a disco twirl to show off the glittery katanas crossed on the back of the suit’s jacket and a red cartoon heart embroidered in metallic thread spanning the width of his ass.

“Remind me why I invited him?” Peter said to MJ.

“To rub it in to Matt that you have three times as many friends still alive than he does,” Wade said, flopping back on the bed. “God, Tony does like nice things,” he said, patting the bed. “What do you say, Pedro? One last dance before you leave me forever for your considerably less-disfigured husband?” He nodded to MJ. “You can watch.”

“Out,” MJ said, pointing toward the door.

Wade somersaulted off the bed and came to his feet in front of Peter, finishing with a courtly bow.

“I bid you adieu, fair Peter,” he said, dipping his knee. “Matt doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

“Come here, asshole,” Peter said, pulling him into a hug and kissing his cheek. “You’re so brave. Losing me must be so hard for you.”

“Oh, it is,” Wade said, pressing his pelvis against Peter’s. “So hard.”

“And we’re done here,” Peter said, spinning Wade around and pushing him toward the door.

“My wedding gift is a threesome, by the way,” Wade said, blowing a kiss over his shoulder. “I want to eat that hunk’s sweet, sweet ass all night. Call me when you want to collect.”

MJ kicked the door shut behind him and leaned against it while Peter took a long drink from the bottle of bourbon Wade left behind.

“What was that you were saying about something going wrong?” she asked.

“Can you ask Claire to sedate him until after the ceremony?” Peter asked, not at all joking.

They met one another’s eyes and dissolved into laughter, and only when they finally came up for air did they realize Tony had come into the room.

“You,” he said, looking at MJ. “Scram. I need to explain the birds and the bees to the kid here.”

MJ snorted.

“It’s okay,” Peter said. “See you upstairs.”

Once MJ closed the door, Tony gingerly lowered himself onto the edge of the bed next to Peter. “I don’t know when I turned into an old man,” he grumbled. Now staring down sixty, he’d finally begun to transition some of his Iron Man duties to his new protégé, Riri Williams, though not, Peter worried, quickly enough. But that was a confrontation for another day.

“What’s on your mind, Tony?”

“Why are you marrying this guy, Pete?”

Peter sighed. He’d been half-expecting this to happen. Tony had never liked Matt, never liked that Matt objected to the Sokovia Accords—long before the supersoldier ban made it illegal to restore his lost powers—never liked that Matt had published a widely regarded article to the Columbia Law Review laying out a constitutional argument against the Superhuman Registration Act or that he'd refused to comply with it himself until his relationship with Peter forced him to, and he never forgave Matt for telling him that he thought Ultron and Hydra’s Project Insight were two sides of the same fascist coin.

“I am not having this conversation today, Tony,” Peter said evenly. “Besides, we’ve already signed the marriage license, so joke’s on you, I guess?”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of it, kid, I’m just trying to understand.”

“Because I love him and he loves me. Next question.”

“How can you love someone who’s so—against what the Avengers are all about?”

“He’s not against the Avengers, Tony. He’s just not shy about calling us out when we fail to live up to our promises. You don’t call someone out if you don’t believe in them in the first place.”

“Huh,” Tony said.

“Sound like anyone else you know?” Peter asked.

“Matt Murdock is no Steve Rogers,” Tony said shortly.

“I was in Leipzig, too. We both know Steve wasn’t the only one who felt that way,” Peter said. “The thing is, Matt has always made me think more deeply about how I use my power and influence than anyone else I know—not just the immediate consequences of my actions, but the precedent it sets and what it could mean in the future. That’s why he never liked the Sokovia Accords—he sees a day when they end up doing more harm than good. And to be honest, Tony, I’m starting to see that day coming, too.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“We both know you’ve already developed all the neurotech we need to put the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen back on the street, and it’s just going to rot away in your R&D vault forever because of that law,” Peter said. “Look me in the eye and tell me that’s how the Sokovia Accords were supposed to work.”

Tony didn’t answer, just looked down at his hands. “We do the best we can with what we have, and no solution is ever perfect. Everything we do has a price.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s too high.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Tony said, putting his arm around Peter’s shoulders and drawing him into a sideways hug. “I really am.”

“I know you are,” Peter said. “But sorry doesn’t make it better.”

“Believe it or not, I actually didn’t come here to fight about politics,” Tony said. “I came here because he’s important to you and I want to understand why.”

“You could have asked me that, like, four years ago,” Peter said sourly. “But fine, I’ll tell you why I love him. I love him because he’s the smartest, most thoughtful, most righteous man I know. I love him because he never, ever gives up. I love him because he sees in me the person I try to be—even better than I can see myself. I’m a better Avenger because of him. Hell, I’m a better man because of him.”

As he spoke, he watched Tony’s face change. An almost imperceptible softness came across him, loosening his jaw and smoothing his brows, and his eyes widened ever so slightly as the first faint glow of understanding began to dawn. He was not yet convinced, Peter could tell, but he was finally open to the idea. Well, that was something, at least.

“Huh,” Tony said, all businesslike and suddenly standing up. “Well, I’ll take that under advisement, then.”

“I wish you would,” Peter said, standing too. “You’ve been hauling this grudge around for way too long as it is.”

He reached out to touch Tony’s arm and Tony responded with the hug Peter wanted. “I just want you to be with someone who deserves you,” he said. “I love you, kiddo.”

“I love you too,” Peter said. “I just hope one day you’ll be able to love him, too.”

“I’m going to try,” Tony said. “I really am.”

* * *

“Fog, can we have a minute?” Karen asked. “Matt, I’ve got your boutonniere.”

“Sure,” Foggy said, squeezing Matt’s shoulder. “See you at the altar.”

She guided him to a relatively quiet corner of the roof garden overlooking Midtown.  

“It’s a beautiful evening,” she said, pinning the dark red (he was told) rosebud to his lapel. “Not a cloud in the sky. The sun is low enough that the street lights are coming on. There’s only one star out, to the east, but it’s bright and steady.”

“It’s not a star,” Matt said. “It’s a planet. Venus.”

“Appropriate,” Karen said, and Matt detected the hint of a wish in her voice. “The goddess of love.”

“Something else on your mind?” Matt asked.

“I just wanted—” Karen began. She brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead. “Before things got too hectic tonight, I just wanted to tell you how happy I am for you. Truly.”

Unbidden, a decade-old memory surfaced: A lazy, rainy late-winter Saturday morning in bed, he worked into the question sideways by idly playing with her hands like he did when he wasn’t done touching her just yet. He’d fiddled with the tiny diamond solitaire she wore on her right hand—her grandmother’s—gently twisting it off and rolling it around between his fingers before putting it onto her left hand.

_That’s the wrong hand._

_What if it wasn’t?_

_We’ve already discussed this, Matt. I won’t be your widow. I won’t._

_I could retire._

_Yeah, but would you?_

A year, she’d asked for. A year without the mask, and then they could talk marriage. He agreed. She moved in. But the city tugged on his sleeve constantly, and the guilt—God, the guilt—of not helping when he knew he was the _only one who could_ ate away more of his soul every day, every week, every month. Guilt begat resentment and resentment begat anger and anger begat the unforgivable night of the unforgivable fight when he punched the wall beside her head and left her terrified and in tears.

That was the night she left him. _We’re done, Matt. I can’t live with the devil and you can’t live without him._

He did not insult her by asking for a second chance, and she didn’t insult herself by offering one. That punch had broken more than the brickwork.   
  
It took years for them to feel like friends again, and he was under no illusions that the only reason they’d even had the chance to was that they were co-owners of a tiny, rarely profitable law practice during the depths of a financial crisis that neither one of them could afford to buy the other out of. The walls of their office became a splint, holding the broken pieces of their relationship together until finally, finally, they began to knit. It took years. It would never be the same. But they healed.

Now she was the one choosing to share her life with an active vigilante and he was the one hanging up the mask and he wondered, with a pang he didn’t expect to feel, whether they’d had a chance after all.

“I suppose it’s normal for us to have—complicated feelings about tonight,” Matt said.

Karen laughed softly. “Sure, we wanted this, once upon a dream,” she said gently. “But I don’t wish it was me standing up there tonight, and you don’t, either. It’s been a very, very long time since I wanted that.”

“You sure know how to knock a guy off his pedestal,” Matt said wryly.

“I have no regrets,” Karen said. “I think we needed to lose each other so we could finally find the people we really belonged with.”

“I’m glad we could find a way to be friends again,” Matt said. “Really. I can’t imagine life without you in it.”

“Me neither,” Karen said, smoothing his lapel. “After Brooklyn—”

It was the closest he’d ever come to dying—and lord, had it been close—and it had been Karen and Claire and Frank who’d had to nurse him back to life while Peter was hunting the bastard who did that to him down.

“I know,” Matt said, covering her hand with his and squeezing it tight. “Let’s never do that again, okay?”

“Deal,” she said, the catch in her voice resolving not into a sob but a laugh. Matt smiled and pulled her into a hug.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to give our guys some long, quiet stretches of time with people who are important to them. The only person I regret not including here is Aunt May, but I wanted to wind this up before DDS3 and I won't have time this week. :( 
> 
> ALSO: I want to clear up something that always gets messed up in Daredevil-world: Law school is not the same thing as college! I don't understand how even the (American!) TV show seems to get it wrong, but it does. In the United States, law school is a 3-year professional program that follows a 4-year undergraduate program. Thus, Matt and Foggy lived together for 7 years, not 4, so no wonder they're so adorably bonded. 
> 
> Join me on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/)!


	3. Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marriage brings us together. MJ wins a bet. Foggy puts his foot in his mouth. Frank gets it.

They met at the altar at sunset, beneath a canopy made from Peter’s father’s prayer shawl and hung with garlands of fragrant red roses and orange and gold chrysanthemums.

They were surrounded by fire, Peter realized—the flowers above, the sunset to the west, and the brilliant gold and orange and red of Central Park to the east. Though it was a cool evening, the arc heaters surrounding the roof kept the garden a comfortable 70 degrees, with only a light breeze to occasionally remind them that it was already midway through October.

And standing before him, Matt, obscenely beautiful in an exquisite black suit with a dark red tie and a matching rose pinned to his lapel.

“Hey,” Peter murmured. “You look amazing.”

Matt smiled and ducked his head a little, and for a split second Peter thought it was shyness, but it was something else, because then Matt reached up and removed his sunglasses and handed them back to Foggy. A soft but perceptible murmur rippled through the guests; even among their most inner circle, only a few had ever seen Matt’s eyes.

“Better?” he asked.

“Fuck you, I’m going to cry,” Peter said, taking Matt’s hands in his and kissing them, and Matt blushed and smiled.

Rabbi Rose cleared her throat. “Ready, guys?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” they both said in unison.

He barely remembered the ceremony. There were prayers and vows and readings and rings and a small glass tucked into a velvet bag for them to crush with their feet for luck, but really there was only Matt, the impossible stillness of his eyes anchoring him to Earth as surely as Matt’s hands clasped around his, anchoring them together at the center of the burning glow of an October sunset in New York, with nothing between them now.

And then they were back downstairs in the penthouse to catch their breath before dinner, sharing another glass of Tony’s scotch and laughing and kissing as the reality of what they’d just done began to set in. And Matt was his husband, and he was Matt’s and holy shit, this was so much better than he had imagined it five years ago in the hotel bar downstairs from the New York Magazine party.

“Mr. Murdock-Parker,” Peter finally said, kissing Matt’s hand with a mock bow. He was never going to get tired of seeing that ring there.

“Mr. Parker-Murdock,” Matt said, kissing his in return, laughing as he did so at some private joke.

“What’s so funny?”

 “Something I’ve been thinking about all day,” he said. “Somebody once told me, ‘New York seems like a place where many impossible things happen.’ And I think tonight might be one of them.”

“What’s so impossible about it?” Peter asked, sliding his hands around Matt’s waist and drawing him into another kiss. “Marrying a gay superhero in front of a bunch of other superheroes on the roof of the building belonging to the richest man in America, who also happens to be a superhero?” He kissed Matt again. “I think that’s just an ordinary day in the Big Apple, babe.”

“Well, when you put it that way….” Matt kissed him back.

“I’m kidding,” Peter said. “It’s extraordinary. You’re extraordinary.” He touched Matt’s temple, where his glasses would have been. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I wanted to,” Matt said. “I don’t have anything to hide from you.”

“By that logic, we should have been naked.”

“Well, the night is young.”

Peter laughed slyly, tucked two fingers into the waist of Matt’s pants and pulled him forward into a kiss.

But before Peter’s hands could migrate any further south, the garden door on the stair landing above burst open.  “Zip your flies, lovebirds,” Tony called. “Dinner’s getting cold.”

“Go away,” Peter laughed.

“I suppose we shouldn’t keep them waiting,” Matt said reluctantly.

“I guess not,” Peter said, withdrawing his hand from Matt’s pants and patting his chest. “You wouldn’t like Bruce when he’s hangry.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Peter said, taking Matt’s arm. “One lifetime of terrible puns, coming right up.”

* * *

They stepped back out onto the roof garden to thunderous applause—literally thunderous, thanks to Thor. After a kiss to silence the cacophony of forks tapped against wineglasses, they were set upon by their loved ones, showered with hugs and kisses and congratulations and love. Here was Karen, pressing a tearstained cheek to his, and Frank, content with a handshake and a slap on the arm. There was a bear hug from Foggy that nearly lifted him off his feet and a much gentler one from Marcie. Colleen was next, and then Claire, and then Malcolm, and then Misty, his rock as he struggled to adapt to a life without powers, kissing him on the forehead and whispering in his ear, “You are one motherfucking badass.”

And then there was May, exhorting him through tears to love her boy (how could he ever not?), and then, of all people, Tony. He took Matt’s hand in his and shook it firmly. “Murdock,” he said gruffly.

“Tony,” Matt said. “Thank you for all this,” he said, gesturing around the roof garden. “And thank you for—your help last year. I never thanked you and I should have. Too proud, I guess. Anyway.” After losing his powers and realizing how different his life was going to be without them, he’d rashly kicked Peter out for three months so he could relearn how to live independently on his own. Without consulting Peter, Tony had put a surveillance detail on him, just in case any bad guys from his old life that he couldn’t defend himself against showed back up. “I appreciate your doing that for me. For us.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said, and Matt imagined him shoving his hands in his pockets, shrugging, and fake-nonchalantly looking away the way he always did when he got caught being nice. “The kid’s worth it.”

“He is,” Matt said. “We can at least agree on that.”

Tony grunted a wordless assent. He clasped Matt’s arm and paused. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’m coming in for the hug.”

Matt hugged him back briefly, awkwardly, and then stepped back. “Well. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.”

“Don’t get all Casablanca on me yet, Murdock,” Tony said.

Finally, while Peter was greeting the last of his guests and the rest were trailing off to find their dinner seats, one more person touched Matt’s sleeve to get his attention.

“Congratulations, Matthew,” Father Lantom said, and for the first time in his life, he hugged Matt. Well past 80 now, Lantom felt as tiny and fragile as a bird beneath Matt’s arms.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Matt said, his voice unexpectedly thick.

“I baptized you, Matthew,” Lantom said. “I gave you your first Communion. I performed your last rites in the hospital after you were first burned, when we thought you wouldn’t survive. I thanked God when you did. I buried your father. I watched you grow from a frightened, angry little boy into the embodiment of a miracle.” Lantom gripped Matthew’s arms with his frail hands with startling strength. “Matthew, one of my most fervent prayers is that I would live to see this day, and I have.”

“Father,” Peter said, joining them. “Thank you for coming.”

“God gave you both gifts I can’t begin to understand,” Lantom said, releasing Matt’s arms so he could take one of Peter’s. “I truly believe one of those gifts was each other.”

“Amen,” Matt said softly.

“Are you sure he’s really Catholic?” Peter asked, linking his arm with Matt’s as Lantom left to find his seat at the table. “And did Tony really just hug you back there?”

“New York,” Matt reminded him. “Impossible things, and so on and so forth.”

Peter laughed.

* * *

Once everyone else was seated, Matt and Peter were delivered to a luxurious two-seat settee on the edge of the dance floor to receive their toasts. They’d both already had a glass of champagne to take the edge off, and suits be damned, they curled up together on that sofa like they did at home, Matt with his arm thrown along the back cushions and Peter leaning in against his shoulder.

After a coin flip, MJ went first. She bounded to the microphone and rummaged around in her suit for her speech quickly exhausting all of her pockets before conceding defeat.

“Guess I’m winging it tonight. Sorry, guys!” she said with a wry laugh. “So, let’s start with this: I wasn’t quite like other girls, growing up.” She curtseyed to punctuate her point, spreading her suit jacket in lieu of a skirt, and looked relieved when that got the intended laugh. "I knew that other girls like me existed, but they didn’t live in my neighborhood or go to my school, and my parents, well—anyway. I was kind of a lonely kid.

“So then one day in fourth grade, the most forlorn little boy I’d ever seen moved in with my next-door neighbors. My parents told me that his name was Peter and his parents had just died so he was going to be living with the Parkers now. He seemed like the only kid in the world sadder than me.”

Matt dropped his arm off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around Peter’s shoulders.

“We both lived in these tall skinny rowhouses that shared a wall, and my bedroom was on the top floor, and sometimes if I couldn’t sleep I’d sneak out the window and sit on the fire escape. Well, that night I couldn’t stop thinking about the sad little boy next door, so I went outside to see if I could figure out which room was his. And lo and behold, there he was, sitting on his fire escape right next to me. And he was crying.

“So I froze. I didn’t know whether to say something or not, but then he looked up and saw me and he seemed so—I don’t even know the word for it. Lost, I guess. He looked so lost that I stuck my arm through the divider to hold his hand. And he seemed to perk up a little bit and scooted right up next to the divider and we introduced ourselves and ended up sitting there like that for hours, two miserable kids just talking about his parents and school and Harry Potter and all sorts of things. And by the time we went to bed I think we knew we were going to be best friends, right?”

“Pretty much,” Peter said.

“And I had him pegged as a fellow gay kid right away. It took him a few more years to peg himself,” she giggled a little. “Okay, that’s enough pegging. Wade, do not tell Aunt May what that means. The point is, I knew the minute we met that we shared something nobody else we knew did, something my parents definitely did not like. And Peter just got it, you know. It’s hard to believe now—we were only ten when we met, and even then he got it, even if neither one of us knew the words for it yet—he knew instinctively with that giant fucking heart of his that I needed a different family, and he immediately volunteered for the job. And his house became my safe haven.

“And then later, when things with my parents—broke, the Parkers’ house became my home. So I guess part of this is a love letter to May, because she didn’t hesitate for a second to open her doors to me,” MJ said, her voice choked. “Stop crying, May, I gotta get through this.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to make this all about me. It wasn’t until after college that he told me about his night gig. We were sharing this teeny-tiny apartment in Sunnyside and one night he wakes me up a little before dawn in his uniform because believe it or not, his zipper got broken during a fight and he needed my help getting it off. I’ll repeat for those of you in the back: Spider-Man got foiled by a busted zipper.”

Tony groaned loudly, but everyone else laughed. “Someone help me describe the look on Tony’s face right now for Matt,” MJ said.

“Apoplectic,” Gwen offered merrily, as Peter laughed and buried his face in Matt’s shoulder.

“Apoplectic! Yes. Thank you, my love,” MJ said. “Anyway, needless to say, that was one hell of a wake-up call. I freaked out, I called in sick to work, I made Peter stay home to tell me everything.  And the one thing I kept coming back to was, ‘But isn’t it dangerous?’ And he kept saying, ‘No, MJ, it’s necessary.’ Necessary. And finally he explained that it was like being the best firefighter in the world—you have to run into the buildings that are burning too hot for anyone else to get close. It wasn’t optional. Lives were at stake.

“And I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus, that’s too much for anyone to carry on their own,’ but this is Peter Parker we’re talking about and he just took it on, no questions asked, and got to work. The hard part, he said, was keeping it a secret. I asked him why he felt he had to—there were plenty of out superheroes by then—and he said it was to protect the people he loved. The easiest way to throw him off his game, he said, was to hurt his family—” Peter squeezed Matt’s arm a little tighter at this— “so the fewer people who knew, the better.

“And then I asked him what he would do if he ever fell in love, and I’ll never forget his answer. He said, ‘I don’t think people with secrets like mine get to fall in love.’” MJ’s voice wavered little, and Matt kissed the top of Peter’s head.

“Fast forward six years, and I get a text from him a little before Christmas that said: _I think I just met my future husband._ Right, Peter?”

  
“Something like that, yeah,” Peter confirmed.

“And most of you know Peter’s got this Instagram account he uses as a portfolio for his photography business, and the next day he posts this photo of Matt from the portrait session, and he’s got this big smile on his face, and it’s not a fake portrait smile, it’s a real one and he’s just the tiniest bit flushed, like he’s just overheard a joke, like he’s having fun despite himself, and I just _know_ it’s the guy Peter was talking about.

“And anyway, I know you all had to surrender your phones before you came up here but if you want to know what I’m talking about you can just look at Matt right now. Sorry, Matt, everyone’s staring at you right now, but if it’s any consolation, you are very cute.”

Matt covered his face with his hand and laughed, really laughed, and Peter squeezed him tight.

“Okay, so let’s go back to that night in Sunnyside, when Peter tells me, ‘I don’t think people with secrets like mine get to fall in love.’ I said, ‘bullshit,’ and that night we made a bet: The first one of us to get married owes the other $100.”

She mounted the microphone back on its stand, walked over to the sofa and held out her hand. “Ahem.”

Peter grinned; he dug out his wallet handed her the $100 bill he’d gotten from the bank two days before. He hadn’t known she would tell the story, but he was prepared to pay up all the same. Then he threw his arms around her and she kissed him on both cheeks and pressed her forehead to his before finally lifting her glass.

“To Matt and Peter,” she called.

* * *

After their glasses were refilled, Foggy took the mike. He didn’t have a speech, or need one—there was nothing Foggy liked better than talking to a crowd.

“So I’ve got three stories I’m going to tell you about Matt. Buckle up.

“Here’s the first: When we were in our second year of law school, Matt and I were both summer associates at this fancy corporate law firm that shall not be named. One weekend, all the summer associates get invited out to a driving range for some networking event that was really just an excuse to play golf and get drunk. And Matt’s like, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do at a driving range?’ but he’s a good sport and comes along anyway.

“So we’re hanging out at this driving range with all the other summer associates and drinking beers and hitting balls and it’s actually not a bad time. Especially for Matt, since there was no shortage of women in our summer cohort happy to keep him company. And at some point someone asks Matt if he wants to try hitting a few, and he says no, and there’s some back and forth negotiation and finally he agrees.

“But this isn’t the kind of story you think it is. You think what’s going to happen is that he’s going to whiff on purpose to maintain his cover, or more likely, since that’s boring and this is a story worth telling at his wedding, he’s going to score a quote-unquote freak hole-in-one that makes him the hero of the summer, exclamation point, exclamation point. But neither of these things happen. Neither of those things happen, because the idiot tasked with teaching the blind guy how to swing a golf club is me.

“Now, I’ve only played golf once in my life before, so when we get up to the tee, I realize I need to take a couple of practice swings first so I can figure out what I need to tell him to do. So I get him to back up a bit, and I start swinging. The problem is that I’m just concentrating on the mechanics, I don’t actually have a ball on the tee, which means I’m not paying attention to where I’m standing. And I don’t realize that every time I square up to take another practice swing, I’m actually moving about half a step further to the right each time.

“But Matt hasn’t moved, right? He’s still standing exactly where I told him to stand, and lo and behold, on my third or fourth try, I’ve gotten _just_ close to him to clock him right in the face on my backswing. Thank God it was just a bone bruise, but he looked like he’d gotten on Mike Tyson’s bad side for the next three weeks. Broke his glasses, too.

“So, we’ve established two things: One, I am a terrible, terrible golfer. And possibly the worst friend ever. But two is what’s important. Two is that Matt knew exactly how close I was getting to him and he never so much as flinched. Anyone else here think they could take a golf swing to the face at full speed without flinching? Wade, you don’t count. Or you, Thor.

“Much later, when I learned that he’d let himself get hit on purpose, I asked him why the hell he didn’t just invent some reason to move out of the way. And he said that after living together for six years, he was afraid he was starting to get sloppy, that it was only a matter of time before I saw him do something he couldn’t explain. He did it because he needed to remind himself what he needed to do.

“And you can debate the wisdom of keeping that particular secret for so long—like Peter, Matt thought he was protecting the people he cared about—but I think it’s safe to say that Matthew Murdock is the most determined sonofabitch any of you will ever meet, and that you underestimate him at your own peril.

“Second story: It’s the summer, maybe fall of 2015. I’m living in D.C. and out of the blue, Matt gives me a call. We haven’t really spoken in months, but I know right away something’s up. And we talk for a while and whatever’s on his mind, he’s circling it like a vulture, just spiraling around it so clearly that I know it’s there—I just can’t see it. So finally I say, ‘Spit it out, dude,’ and he tells me he’s seeing someone and I ask him what her name is and he says, ‘Peter.’

“And I think he’s joking at first and we go back and forth for a bit and finally I realize he’s completely serious. And we don’t mean to, but we end up getting drunk on the phone together and having one of those epic, hours-long conversations we used to have in college about love and purpose and the meaning of life and everything in between. He talks about Peter and his process of coming out and I’m talking about how Marci and I are thinking about having kids and it’s just one of those points in time when you realize that there’s no one else in the world you trust more to help you work through the stuff that matters.

“So the next time I come back to New York, I’ve got to meet him, of course. Dinner with my folks runs a little late so Matt and Peter are already at the bar by the time I get there. They’re sitting at a table in the back, but they’re so lost in conversation that they don’t notice me. So I just stand there for a little while and watch them, just trying to see how they work together. And it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. Peter—who, by the way, looks like he’s barely out of high school—Peter’s obviously telling a funny story, because Matt keeps cracking up. And I realize that I can’t remember the last time I saw him that relaxed and happy and just—present.

“MJ knows what I’m talking about. That look.

“But the other thing I notice is that every time Matt laughs, Peter smiles. He’s doing it now. He’s having the time of his life making Matt happy, and I swear to God I just want to kiss him on the spot. It’s so glorious. I think they’d only been together for about what, a year? Less? But I could tell from across the room they were both goners. This was it. They’d found their people. That’s when I knew.”

Matt nuzzled his chin against the top of Peter’s head.

“Okay, third story: I wasn’t really going to talk about the past year too much, because God, that was a hard year, and we’re all supposed to be happy tonight, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that nothing about tonight would make any iota of sense if I pretended it didn’t happen.”

Peter curled up closer and took Matt’s hand in his. Matt had tensed up a little, his smile had faded a little. Peter kissed his hand.

“So, it happened. We lost four close friends. Matt’s had to fight his way back from a place I think not all of us would be able to return from. But this is a man who was willing to get punched in the face with a golf club to keep a secret, so you better believe he came back. And things are different now, but he hasn’t lost the mission. He’s still taking care of Hell’s Kitchen. He’s still making a difference.”

Matt was fighting tears now, face turned down toward the floor, and shaking his head _no_. Peter squeezed his hand and murmured, “Yes, yes, yes,” but Matt wasn’t having it. He wanted out.

Nobody else seemed to realize anything was wrong yet, but Foggy did. He caught and held Peter’s gaze for a moment, silently asking him for permission to fix this, and Peter didn’t know what Matt needed to hear right now, but he trusted Foggy and nodded for him to continue.

And Foggy didn’t fail them. “So, back to the third story. The thing is—I actually can’t tell you the third story, because it hasn’t happened yet. It starts tonight. May it never end. I love you guys.”

Then without waiting for the applause, he abandoned the mike to kneel in front of Matt, hands on his knees.

“Shit, I’m so sorry. You okay, buddy?” He used his courtroom whisper; only Matt and Peter could hear.

“Yeah,” Matt said, wiping his eyes and giving a brief, embarrassed smile. He reached for Foggy, found an arm and squeezed it. “I’m fine, really. It was just…too much for a minute there. I’m good now.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, I really am,” Foggy repeated, kissing Matt’s forehead, eliciting a second smile and a firm “Still not made of glass, Fog.”

“I love you, man,” Foggy insisted, leaning in to hug him.

“I know, buddy,” Matt said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What you said meant a lot to me.  It just--caught me by surprise.”

“I feel like such an asshole.”

“You didn’t ruin the wedding, I promise,” Matt laughed. “But I’ll be happy to hold it against you every time I need a favor from now on if it’ll make you feel better.”

By the time they stood to take their seats for dinner, Peter could tell the storm had passed. Matt was loose-limbed again and cracking jokes, and Foggy no longer looked like he’d just stepped on a kitten. The rest of their guests were talking and drinking and looking for their seats, and no one, it seemed, was any the wiser about what had just happened. Except, Peter thought, briefly making eye contact from two tables away—Frank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession: I'm not 100% thrilled with this chapter, but again, I'm trying to wrap this up before DDS3 and I'm just plain durn out of time. I'm not sure if the parallel construction of the speeches creates a sense of unity or just feels repetitive, and the POV is all over the damn place, and well, I just don't like it. But I love MJ and Foggy (and Father Lantom, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters to write), and I hope you do too. 
> 
> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/), too, if you like.


	4. Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter picks a cheesy first-dance song. Frank and Matt pour one out for the lost Defenders. Matt and Peter take a walk.

Dinner passed in a blur of bites stolen between half-conversations and constant interruptions for photos and hellos, and by the time the plates were cleared, Matt was ready to leave. He loved his friends, he really did, but he’d reached the point where he would have happily taken a vow of silence for a year just to get some peace and quiet.

But before he could escape, he had to get through the first dance.

In truth, Matt loved a good slow dance. Loved the hold-me-close of it, the hip-to-hip of it, the warm-breath-on-each-other’s-necks of it. It always left him a little ragged around the edges, pleasantly weak in the knees and hungry for other pleasures, not least of which, at the moment, was the three-minute break he was about to get from having to talk to anyone but Peter.

He didn’t much care for the song Peter had chosen—some sappy top-40 ballad Matt vaguely remembered from a few years ago—but Peter had pushed hard for it and honestly, Matt cared a lot more about the dance partner than the music, so.

“How are you doing?” Peter said softly, as they took the floor. “All introverted out yet?”

Matt smiled. “Let’s just say I’m very, very, very glad to finally have a few minutes alone with my best guy.”

“In front of two dozen of our best friends?”

“Oh, they don’t exist,” Matt said. “Close your eyes. It’s just us.”

“I hate to break it to you, but one of us has to keep their eyes open for this, and it ain’t you.”

Matt gave an amused huff. “Can I ask you a serious question, though?”

“Anything.”

“Why the hell did you pick this song? It’s so cheesy.”

Peter laughed at that, and held Matt closer. “You really don’t recognize it?”

“Does this sound remotely like anything I normally listen to?”

“We can’t slow dance to anything you listen to.”

“What are you talking about? Nine Inch Nails has a few slow songs.”

Peter laughed. “I’ll give you a hint. It was playing during a very important moment in our relationship.”

Matt sighed. “Babe, I have no idea.”

“This was the first song we ever danced to,” Peter said. “At Foggy’s wedding.”

“It was?”

“You really don’t have a sentimental bone in your body, do you?”

“I really wasn’t paying much attention to the music,” Matt laughed and pulled Peter a little closer. “It was the first time I’d ever danced with another man before, after all.”

“And what a man he turned out to be,” Peter said, nipping his lower lip.

Matt laughed and wrapped his arms all the way around him. Peter did the same, and little by little their dance became little more than a swaying embrace.

Matt spoke softly into Peter’s ear. “He turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

* * *

At long last, peace and quiet arrived in the person of Frank Castle. After a few more obligatory dances—May, Karen, Wade, for about fifteen seconds until Peter intervened—he’d left his husband (his husband!) on the dance floor with a kiss and a laughing “go on, be social” before hitching a ride back to the grooms’ table on Frank’s elbow.

Instead of leaving him there, though, Frank dropped into Peter’s chair and handed him a beer. Filled the empty seat so nobody else would. Didn’t speak. Just let him drink and think.

The past year and a half had transformed their relationship entirely. What had once been an uncomfortable détente forged out of their mutual care for Karen had abruptly become an unwanted lifelong bond following the Brooklyn explosion that had nearly killed him. Frank, posted on a rooftop across the street, had been the only other survivor, had been the one to pull Matt from the wreckage, had been the one to get him away from the scene before the cops found him, had been the one to keep him alive until Claire could reach them.

From his new permanent seat on the sidelines, Matt finally understood how loss could beget a rage like Frank’s, finally understood that what separated had never been a matter of kind, just degree. Had he been able to recover his abilities, would he have begun dropping bodies like Frank? He wasn’t sure anymore, but he knew he could no longer swear he wouldn’t. It was there, in that new, dark moral uncertainty where Matt had finally found their friendship.

The party swirled on around them, filling the sky with a happy cacophony of music and laughter and conversation. He delighted in hearing voices he’d never heard in the same room before talking to one another—Claire making appreciative hums as Scott recounted some daring deed Matt could tell she did not quite believe, Bucky and Misty finally giving into curiosity and comparing notes about their arms, Malcolm and Wanda gushing like teenagers over the latest Lady Gaga album.

But there were other voices he was listening for, too. Voices that were missing. Voices he was already beginning to forget. He knew it was inevitable, had happened with his dad, too, but it was a hard reckoning all the same.

“Jess would have hated this,” Matt remarked.

Frank gave an amused huff. “How drunk d’you think she’d be by now?”

“She’d break the breathalyzer,” Matt said. He laughed but he also shook his head. “It’s not funny, really. I wish she’d found her peace before she died.”

“Almost nobody gets that, Murdock.”

“I like to think my dad did,” Matt said, then felt his voice turn wistful. “They should be here.” How far he had come since _I should be with them_.

“Lotta people should be here who aren’t,” Frank said. His wife, Maria, sure, but Matt knew that as he got older it was his children he missed the most. Lisa would be in her mid-twenties now, and Frank Jr. would be almost Peter’s age, and Matt knew that not a day went by that Frank didn’t wonder what they’d be doing now if they hadn’t been murdered.

“It’s the good days that get you the worst,” Frank continued. “Bad days, you’re glad to be alone, glad nobody’s around to see you like that. You get that.”

“Do I ever.”

Frank laughed a little. “But the good days—the days you want to share—that’s what’s hard. Because they show up whether you want them to or not. Even now, I think I see Lisa walking through the crowd, I just know it’s her from the way she walks and the way she laughs and I’m wondering how my baby got so tall. And then there’s Frank Jr. all grown up, and maybe he’s got a little boy by now, maybe I’m a grandfather, Christ, and the kid’s sleeping on his lap and getting heavy and Frankie’s looking at his watch and wishing they’d gotten a sitter. And his wife’s around here somewhere, too maybe she’s got another kid on the way and I’ll be a grandfather again soon.

“So yeah, Jessica’s being Jessica and drinking too much scotch and probably still wearing jeans and that old leather jacket because she’s Jess, but she’s here, Red, she’s here and Luke’s feeling fly in a tux and the ladies can’t take their eyes off him and Danny’s wandering around fucking barefoot and stoned and drinking kombucha or some shit, and Trish is just a goddamn queen in a designer dress and expensive perfume making everyone here laugh and smile and feel good about themselves because nobody in the world could work a room like her. They’re all here, yeah, in you and me and Colleen and Misty and Malcolm and Claire and Karen and everyone else who knew them.

“That’s where they live now, Red—inside you. And it ain’t fair but it’s all you have, and you gotta let it make you smile, because the alternative is to drive yourself insane trying to forget. And sometimes it feels like the hardest thing in the goddamn world to do—hell, you know what it does to me—but you do it because they were real and they mattered and they’re still part of you, whether they’re here or not.”  

Matt didn’t reply immediately. His throat ached with an unexpressed sob— _not now, Murdock_ —because Frank had gotten them all dead to rights but Christ, he was losing them more and more every day.

Still, he liked to think that there might be a way for their ghosts to hang around a little longer. He’d take it, at any rate. He missed them so very much.

“You don’t always have the healthiest coping strategies, Frank,” he said when he could trust himself to speak again.

Frank didn’t answer, just clinked his bottle against Matt’s and drank.

* * *

A little after midnight they made an Irish goodbye and slipped away from the party without telling anyone except Happy. Happy offered to drive them home—they’d leave for Hawaii on Tony’s plane in the morning—but it was only 15 blocks, and they wanted to walk.

It was a chilly night but not unbearable, and they were pleasantly buzzed and flushed from the night’s excitement, and once they had their coats on the cold did not bother them much at all.

In daylight, New York is one giant firehose of energy pushing you forward, always forward, a state of chronic progress whether you want to be moving or not. You’re always going somewhere—rushing to your next meeting, trying to catch your next train, chasing your next dollar, your next photo op, your next shiny piece of status tech.

But night’s different. Nighttime in New York is acute, especially on Saturday, just one now after another, a swirl of fluid plans and whims and I-don’t-know-where-do-you-want-to-go’s. Everybody’s a little bit louder in the dark, and looser, every emotion you can think of running a little bit hotter, everyone’s true selves coming out to play after a day or a week strapped down behind their 9-to-5 uniforms, be they coveralls or aprons or $500 suit jackets or four-inch pumps.

New York at night is shiny and sleazy and not entirely safe, but at the heart of it there’s a big dumb golden core of innocence that Peter loved, of believing this could be the night, this could be the one.

They both loved it, Peter and Matt, New York at night. It never got old, either. Even now, when Peter suited up to go out on patrol, Matt liked to go up to the roof just to observe like he used to, take in the sounds and the smells of the nighttime city that he could still perceive, build it back up in his mind as best he could. Sometimes he’d still be there when Peter got back—he had a hard time sleeping when Peter wasn’t next to him so he usually waited up anyway—and they’d talk about his night. Sometimes Matt would offer suggestions—there’s a security guard at the shipping terminal who can tell you everything you need to know about that one, try turning your wrist a little bit more like this next time—but mostly he just listened or asked questions. He liked still being able to keep a finger on the pulse of crime in the city.

But neither one of them was thinking about crime tonight. They were deep in their own now, the bright buzz of street lights and neon and the rough pavement beneath their feet and the pressure of Matt’s hand on Peter’s elbow, walking so close together their arms touched, the warmth of each other’s bodies taking the edge off the cold October wind.

Their conversation was a mix of sweet nothings and party gossip and last-minute don’t-let-me-forgets before they left for their honeymoon in the morning, and the precious, workaday intimacy of it all made Peter’s heart want to explode with joy. He stole glances at Matt as they walked, seeing his face as if for the first time, that killer smile and the happy crinkles at the corner of his eye, the flush that crept up past his 5 o’clock shadow that came from more than just the cold, like this was the best date ever, which Peter supposed it was.

Three blocks from home Matt pulled them to a stop outside of Famous Ray’s.

“Did you actually get a chance to eat tonight?” he asked.

Peter’s stomach growled as he tried to remember. “I don’t think so?”

They went in and ordered a couple of slices each and some garlic knots for good measure because the longer they stood there the hungrier they realized they were and took them to one of the rickety tables by the window to eat.

There were two other couples, college kids if Peter wasn’t mistaken, drunk and fashionable and trying to postpone that awkward early-relationship decision between good night and shitty first-time sex, and a trio of teenage boys killing time till their friend behind the counter got off work, and a graveyard-shift beat cop grabbing a slice for himself and his partner. The cop spotted Matt and stopped by their table on his way to the door.

“Hey, Murdock,” he said. “Tommy Greco.”

“Hey, officer,” Matt said, turning toward him. “Quiet night, I hope?”

“So far so good, but it’s Saturday night in the 15th Precinct, so I’m not laying any bets on it lasting yet,” he said. “Looks like you were somewhere fancy.”

Matt flushed and smiled and held up his left hand. “Got married tonight, actually.”

“No shit,” Greco said delightedly, alternating a surprised glance between Matt and Peter. “Well, congratulations, man. Seriously.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, his smile turning into a big dumb happy grin.

Greco winked conspiratorially at Peter. “I didn’t get to eat at my wedding, either,” he said with a rueful laugh. “We ended up ordering Chinese and passing out, but don’t tell any of the boys that, okay?”

“Your secret’s safe with us,” Peter said solemnly.

“Well, I’ve got a hungry partner and a city to protect,” Greco said, nodding through the window toward the police car parked outside. “You guys have a great night, okay?”

After he left they laughed and finished eating, more slowly now, wanting to make the night last just a little bit longer, enjoying the delicious cozy exhaustion that was creeping over them in the overwarm restaurant as the adrenaline of the wedding began to drain away. They tangled their feet together between the table as they ate, sometimes finding themselves laughing for no reason other than the fact they were happy.

Finally they finished and went back out into the night. It seemed a lot colder now, and they walked more quickly now.

And then they were home. They were home, and they were married. Matt scooped Peter up into his arms and carried him inside, but they were both laughing too hard to get more than one or two steps inside before Matt had to put him down. They shed their suits as they walked toward the bedroom, eager to be free of buttons and belts and ties, and fell into bed, curling up together beneath the covers to warm up.

“Hello, husband,” Peter said, trying the word on for size.

Matt grinned and tightened his hold on Peter. “I like the sound of that.” He took Peter’s left hand in his, still cold from the long walk, running his thumb over Peter’s ring and then bringing his fingers to his lips to kiss.

Peter wasn’t sure how long they lay there, facing each other, running their slowly-warming fingers over each other’s faces and ears and necks and collarbones, as if they had to prove to themselves that this was real, that this had happened, that something, somehow, in the world had gone right for once. He’d probably have a nightmare tonight, always did after an intense day, but he wasn’t afraid of that anymore. Matt would be there when he woke, would always be there when he woke. He didn’t need to be afraid of anything ever again.

For once, Matt was the first to fall asleep. He just needed to rest his eyes for a while, he said, but soon his hands fell still and heavy and then his respiration began to slow, and Peter smiled and kissed his forehead and snuggled in just a little bit closer to listen to his husband breathe. Sleep was coming for him, too, coming for him fast, but he tried to stay awake as long as he possibly could, tried to put off morning for just a little while more.

Because this was the night. And this man, this strong, beautiful, fearless man beside him—he was the one.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, y'all. Thank you so much for reading! It'll probably be a while before I finish my next big addition to this universe (there might be a few odd bits here and there) but in the meantime, I'm [BeaArthurPendragon](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.
> 
> [Their song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB-5XG-DbAA), if you're curious.

**Author's Note:**

> Curious who I'd cast as my all-grown-up Peter Parker? [Here you go](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2676147/mediaviewer/rm751804928).
> 
> This is not the end, y'all. I've got two more installments in the hopper for you. xoxo
> 
> I'm [BeaArthurPendragon](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/beaarthurpendragon) on Tumblr, too!


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